A week with a Castlevania and a Metroid in it feels like the President and Vice President flying in the same airplane...
Living in space, where nobody can hear you scream this week is the next update for the NSO Gameboy Advance Line-up, and it's a game I was honestly kind of surprised wasn't on the initial listing; Metroid Fusion! The clear antecedent to Metroid Dread! But made of pixels instead of polygons, but with precisely as much acknowledging and suborning to a superior officer as represented by a computer who talks about how much danger you're in a lot. Explore scenic "A Space Station with a Lot of Biomes" and then murder absolutely every single mother-cussing thing inside it because they're all actually John Carpenters The Things. Meanwhile you're already inside and trying to kill yourself.
Just another day in the life of outer-spaces best crawler, Metroid.
And I normally don't cover DLC but, well, it fits with this weeks theme, so I'd be a real weirdo if I didn't. Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania launched this week, and it takes the *tremendously fun* base game of Dead Cells and decides to just... slap a LOT of Castlevania content into it; several new biomes to explore; Dead Cells'd up Castlevania monsters, heaps of CV inspired weapon sets and music, it's just an absolute smorg of putting Something I Already Love into Something I Already love and expecting me to double love it.
AND GUESS WHAT I DO!
It's like a very tedious Tennis match, so much Double Love in here!
And while I ALSO don't usually cover games that aren't on the Switch (well, it's announced for Switch, just not out this same week), we have Romancelevania, which, as you certainly surmised, is a video game about Count Dracula being granted the position of host of a reality dating TV show where he must WINE AND DINE hunky monster boys and sultry monster girls, in between bouts of running around a haunted monster castle beating the crap out of it's entire unliving occupancy with whips and swords and flung axes and the like.
It's a timeless love story for the ages. And vastly less bonkers than Kiss of the Vampire.
And if you love Metroid and Castlevania, but you don't want to love one at the expense of the other, and furthermore, wish it was a bit more damp, then WELL GOOD NEWS, because there's also a Metroidvania out this week that looks corking good; Pronty! This one here is a scubatroidvania as you're some kind of a widdle mer-peep (what looks like a cross between Mega Man and Prince Sidon) who has to protect a secret underwater city from a *literal* boatload of mutant cyber-fish and robo-skeletoctopi.
It looks a lot like the recent Knight Witch, which I also loved, except underwater instead of underground.
And of course we aren't done talking about exploring haunted castles and exploding the CRAP out of everything within them, but let's make things a little less flat, a bit more three dimensional. And so next is Little Witch Nobeta, which is about a GUN WITCH who casts abraKABLAMbra through a spooky castle trying to unamnesia herself.
It's an Idea Factory game, so my expectations of the final product are guarded, and I only pray to God that the fact that the main character looks to be, like, 7 years old overides the usual content warnings of an Idea Factory game.
It's Rated T for "Suggestive Themes" so that could go either way...
And one more game about exploring a haunted manor and killing the ghosts within it, WHY NOT? WHO IS GOING TO STOP ME? Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse certainly isn't because it is, INDEED, a video game about exploring a haunted manor and out of which all the offending ghouls and goblins are summarily evicted by way of a magic murder-camera.
I ain't never played a Fatal Frame game, but I understand that to be the premise.
This one is a remake of the Wii release from waaaay back in 2009, but it's been brought up to Much Gussier 2023 standards
Now on to something that is still *technically* about exploring haunted monster houses, but in a much more methodical, less Jump Scare and Explosion heavy way, we have Ib, which is not about irritable bowels, but, instead, about a museum! A girl who likes being in museums, and also... a girl who likes being stuck in a Monster Filled Murder Museum much less than that. It started as an indie game, like, 20 years ago but now it's BACK, BABY, and it made the BIG TIME!
It's also one of those time where picking an appropriate Simpsons image is easy-peasy.
Oni: Road to be the Mightiest Oni is apparently something that's more of a Zelda than a Metroid/Castlevania, but, even more than that, it's an Okami. You've got one of them little horn-headed tiger-pants guys who really, really, REALLY wants to be taken seriously as far as being an Unstoppable Monster Lord is concerned, and his human buddy who is actually capable of helping facilitate that goal, and have the two of them to work together in order to get busy killing or get busy dying all through Magical Fantasy Japan, asserting your dominance through MONSTER VIOLENCE.
Next up is another one of the Atari 2600 remakes that makes things all Cool Looking and Trony-y; Caverns of Mars: Recharge, and like OH SO VERY MANY Atari games, I have never played it, but the screenshots are adequate to give me the gist of the experience; it's a vertical shmup-em-up but it's one where the screen scrolls DOWN, instead of up and also the environments' are all completely destructible.
Seems like a good time for any explosion aficionados out there.
Figment 2: Lost Valley is a zeld-em-up where you're some weird little clown-lookin' Adventure Time-y Guy tasked with poppin' into peeps brain-zones and solving their emotional crises by hitting them with swords until they stop being scared or bored or whatever.
That's how therapy works; by engaging Brain Violence until youre sense of self is restored, right?
Pretty sure.
Next we have not one but TWO SRPGs, that aim for some... wildly different aesthetic markets. First off we have the long-awaited (?) return of a beloved (?) classic (?) Record of the Agarest War, a game which I entirely know from its marketing of "This SRPG has... bosoms... are you interested yet?", and the other is The Last Spell, which appears to be something much more in the vein of, say, Rampart (or perhaps my dear, neglected, Locks Quest) if it were turn-based and also was about exploding the hell out of a Skeleton Army instead of scoundral vikings. Build up a fortress which is intermittedly attacked by an inexhaustible undead army! That's video games for ya!
And finally we have a game that was developed with the aide of our very own Lakupo; Justice League: Cosmic Chaos it's a beat-em-up in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance vein (just... from the Distinguished Competition instead of the House of Ideas) as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have to deal with what is inarguably Supermans greatest arch-enemy, Mr. Mxyzptlk.
It looks to skew to a younger audience, so you can expect to steal 40 cakes, and not chortle at any boners.
Phew, I think that's everything
Living in space, where nobody can hear you scream this week is the next update for the NSO Gameboy Advance Line-up, and it's a game I was honestly kind of surprised wasn't on the initial listing; Metroid Fusion! The clear antecedent to Metroid Dread! But made of pixels instead of polygons, but with precisely as much acknowledging and suborning to a superior officer as represented by a computer who talks about how much danger you're in a lot. Explore scenic "A Space Station with a Lot of Biomes" and then murder absolutely every single mother-cussing thing inside it because they're all actually John Carpenters The Things. Meanwhile you're already inside and trying to kill yourself.
Just another day in the life of outer-spaces best crawler, Metroid.
And I normally don't cover DLC but, well, it fits with this weeks theme, so I'd be a real weirdo if I didn't. Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania launched this week, and it takes the *tremendously fun* base game of Dead Cells and decides to just... slap a LOT of Castlevania content into it; several new biomes to explore; Dead Cells'd up Castlevania monsters, heaps of CV inspired weapon sets and music, it's just an absolute smorg of putting Something I Already Love into Something I Already love and expecting me to double love it.
AND GUESS WHAT I DO!
It's like a very tedious Tennis match, so much Double Love in here!
And while I ALSO don't usually cover games that aren't on the Switch (well, it's announced for Switch, just not out this same week), we have Romancelevania, which, as you certainly surmised, is a video game about Count Dracula being granted the position of host of a reality dating TV show where he must WINE AND DINE hunky monster boys and sultry monster girls, in between bouts of running around a haunted monster castle beating the crap out of it's entire unliving occupancy with whips and swords and flung axes and the like.
It's a timeless love story for the ages. And vastly less bonkers than Kiss of the Vampire.
And if you love Metroid and Castlevania, but you don't want to love one at the expense of the other, and furthermore, wish it was a bit more damp, then WELL GOOD NEWS, because there's also a Metroidvania out this week that looks corking good; Pronty! This one here is a scubatroidvania as you're some kind of a widdle mer-peep (what looks like a cross between Mega Man and Prince Sidon) who has to protect a secret underwater city from a *literal* boatload of mutant cyber-fish and robo-skeletoctopi.
It looks a lot like the recent Knight Witch, which I also loved, except underwater instead of underground.
And of course we aren't done talking about exploring haunted castles and exploding the CRAP out of everything within them, but let's make things a little less flat, a bit more three dimensional. And so next is Little Witch Nobeta, which is about a GUN WITCH who casts abraKABLAMbra through a spooky castle trying to unamnesia herself.
It's an Idea Factory game, so my expectations of the final product are guarded, and I only pray to God that the fact that the main character looks to be, like, 7 years old overides the usual content warnings of an Idea Factory game.
It's Rated T for "Suggestive Themes" so that could go either way...
And one more game about exploring a haunted manor and killing the ghosts within it, WHY NOT? WHO IS GOING TO STOP ME? Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse certainly isn't because it is, INDEED, a video game about exploring a haunted manor and out of which all the offending ghouls and goblins are summarily evicted by way of a magic murder-camera.
I ain't never played a Fatal Frame game, but I understand that to be the premise.
This one is a remake of the Wii release from waaaay back in 2009, but it's been brought up to Much Gussier 2023 standards
Now on to something that is still *technically* about exploring haunted monster houses, but in a much more methodical, less Jump Scare and Explosion heavy way, we have Ib, which is not about irritable bowels, but, instead, about a museum! A girl who likes being in museums, and also... a girl who likes being stuck in a Monster Filled Murder Museum much less than that. It started as an indie game, like, 20 years ago but now it's BACK, BABY, and it made the BIG TIME!
It's also one of those time where picking an appropriate Simpsons image is easy-peasy.
Oni: Road to be the Mightiest Oni is apparently something that's more of a Zelda than a Metroid/Castlevania, but, even more than that, it's an Okami. You've got one of them little horn-headed tiger-pants guys who really, really, REALLY wants to be taken seriously as far as being an Unstoppable Monster Lord is concerned, and his human buddy who is actually capable of helping facilitate that goal, and have the two of them to work together in order to get busy killing or get busy dying all through Magical Fantasy Japan, asserting your dominance through MONSTER VIOLENCE.
Next up is another one of the Atari 2600 remakes that makes things all Cool Looking and Trony-y; Caverns of Mars: Recharge, and like OH SO VERY MANY Atari games, I have never played it, but the screenshots are adequate to give me the gist of the experience; it's a vertical shmup-em-up but it's one where the screen scrolls DOWN, instead of up and also the environments' are all completely destructible.
Seems like a good time for any explosion aficionados out there.
Figment 2: Lost Valley is a zeld-em-up where you're some weird little clown-lookin' Adventure Time-y Guy tasked with poppin' into peeps brain-zones and solving their emotional crises by hitting them with swords until they stop being scared or bored or whatever.
That's how therapy works; by engaging Brain Violence until youre sense of self is restored, right?
Pretty sure.
Next we have not one but TWO SRPGs, that aim for some... wildly different aesthetic markets. First off we have the long-awaited (?) return of a beloved (?) classic (?) Record of the Agarest War, a game which I entirely know from its marketing of "This SRPG has... bosoms... are you interested yet?", and the other is The Last Spell, which appears to be something much more in the vein of, say, Rampart (or perhaps my dear, neglected, Locks Quest) if it were turn-based and also was about exploding the hell out of a Skeleton Army instead of scoundral vikings. Build up a fortress which is intermittedly attacked by an inexhaustible undead army! That's video games for ya!
And finally we have a game that was developed with the aide of our very own Lakupo; Justice League: Cosmic Chaos it's a beat-em-up in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance vein (just... from the Distinguished Competition instead of the House of Ideas) as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have to deal with what is inarguably Supermans greatest arch-enemy, Mr. Mxyzptlk.
It looks to skew to a younger audience, so you can expect to steal 40 cakes, and not chortle at any boners.
Phew, I think that's everything
